Hammer Horror and my darkest hour

YOU find your roving reporter today still roving, but a touch stiffly. After years immersed in the beautiful game as a fan, reporter and really bad player, I have finally sustained a proper football injury, and at the 2008 European Championships to boot.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get it playing football. I got it — cough — running for a tram.

Actually, it’s not entirely true to say that I never had a proper football injury before. Once, when turning out for the grand old club, HotPress Moenchengladbach 1891 — the legendary ‘Munchies’ — I did go over rather spectacularly on my ankle. Unfortunately, the ball was nowhere near me at the time, as was usually the case in my playing “career”, so it hardly qualified as “shipping a knock”.